What Feels Like Home
by khaleessiya
Summary: Written for the prompt: As their journey to find Cyrus drags on longer and longer, Alice is having problems sleeping. The knave helps her with her insomnia.


Nothing is ever truly quiet in Wonderland, not even in the dead of night, nor is it ever truly dark. There's always a light somewhere, red or blue, maybe even the lingering brilliance of fairy dust. Now, it's the green glow of the moss on the trees they've taken shelter under. But it's not the light preventing her from sleeping. Alice blames the somewhat distant trills and tinkles of a patch of Bellflowers singing for keeping her awake, though truly, it's one of the nicer sounds to fall asleep to, if she could.

Clouds have long since covered the stars and the moon, but she stares up anyway, her view only partially obscured by the branches above, trying to discern shapes in the darkness. It's the sort of night that's coloured like a plum, the clouds etched in dark gray against the bruised sky. Despite that, the beauty of it, they're all just lumps to her. Every one turns out to be nothing, and it's pointless. There are no figures in the sky, sleep will not come, and she's long begun to doubt they'll ever find Cyrus.

Frustrated, Alice lets out a heavy breath of air as she looks away, turning onto her side. From there, she can see Will lying with his back to her, further than he usually sleeps from her. Far enough away that even if she stretched out her arm, she doubts she'd be able to touch his hand if he outstretched his own arm. Certainly far enough that she can't tell if he's sleeping, and doesn't want to risk waking him with a whisper.

"Would you please learn to stop thinking so bloody loud?"

Will's voice is sharp enough in the relative quiet that Alice jumps, one hand coming to her chest, fingers curling around her pendant, as she closes her eyes. Her heart is a rapid drumbeat within her chest, and it takes her a moment before it slows, the rhythm steadying out until it's normal.

"Maybe if you were asleep you wouldn't hear me thinking," she finally offers.

There's a moment of shuffling as Will turns onto his other side so he's facing Alice, or more accurately, studying her. She stares back, trying to decipher the look on his face, then gives up, lowering her eyes to the grass.

"Maybe if _you_ were asleep your thinking wouldn't be keeping me awake."

It's an infuriating circle of words for Alice, pointless. _Everything is pointless._ She sighs, lifting her eyes just briefly enough to see he's still watching her, then rolls onto her back again.

"Y'know, back where I was before this, they thought counting sheep would help you fall asleep," Will tells her, his voice a low murmur in the darkness.

"What do you do if you haven't any sheep?"

Will laughed, a short burst of mirth that ended too quickly for Alice's liking. She liked when he laughed, when he was happy. When he didn't seem like something was weighing on his mind more and more with each passing day.

"Not real sheep-"

"I know," Alice cuts him off, "We have that saying where I come from, too. Doesn't help, though."

"Then why'd you ask?"

She shrugs, turns her face to look at him again, watches as he uses his arm to push himself into a seated position, moving so his back is against the trunk of the tree closest to him, body angled enough that he can look at her easily. The moss illuminates one side of his face in green, making it all that more easy to see he's still staring at her. Something Alice has been catching him at a lot lately, as if he's trying to puzzle something out.

"What?"

Her inquiry seems to jar him out of whatever he's thinking because Will looks away quickly, staring off into the distance, either at something she can't see or at nothing. Not for the first time, Alice wonders if he thinks she belongs back in that asylum. That this is a fool's errand they're on and he's the only one sane enough to see that Cyrus is lost to her forever. But thinking that hurts, because it would mean one more person who has left her, forgotten her, given up on her. That maybe Cyrus doesn't love her anymore.

She mimics him, rising until she's got her back firmly against the tree, pressing perhaps just a tiny bit too hard so that the pain snaps her out of the spiral of dark thoughts swirling in her mind. _'You don't need proof, Alice,'_ she tells herself. Only it doesn't make her feel better, like it usually does, instead weighing on her, like a stone that's dropped heavily into the pit of her stomach.

"I didn't mean to wake you," she begins, not sure how to finish, or even if she was going to say anything more, her words trailing off as she looks at her hands in her lap.

"What makes you think you did?"

Alice glances up, starts to say, _'Because you said so,'_ but thinks better of it, offering him a simple shrug in response.

"Ah, come now, Chesh got your tongue?"

Will's tone is teasing, cheeky enough that it brings a smile to her lips even though she's fighting it, because _damn him_ for ruining her melancholy mood. She's entitled to them once in a while, she thinks. Especially at night, when he's supposed to be sleeping and leaving her to grow frustrated as she tries her very hardest not to think about all the things she shouldn't, all while sleep eludes her.

"There it is," he says, a smile of his own clear in his voice. "Knew you had one hiding."

And his words only remind her that she hasn't smiled in days, not a real smile, anyway.

"Who's Anastasia?"

The question tumbles out of her quickly enough that the words run together. A part of her understands this is her way of dampening the mood, of ruining things, and she doesn't understand why she can't just let Will cheer her up. Alice frowns, looks at him, and hates herself when she sees the way his face has tightened, his entire body going tense. The way it always does when she asks the question, and his answer is always a variation of the same thing: no.

"Not tonight, love," and his voice sounds so weary suddenly that Alice feels her throat tighten. Love and loss, tangled up in three words that have begun to mark their journey together.

_Not tonight, Alice. _It's never tonight, not for Cyrus to be found, or for Will to tell her such a simple thing as this. She doesn't even know why it bothers her so much, the not knowing, except maybe if she understood it would help her. Maybe if she knew how he continued on after having his heart broken she might be able to finally accept that this isn't working, that it's time to stop. To give up and let the pieces of her heart fall where they may without Cyrus there to put them back together.

"Why are you so concerned about her, anyway?" Will asks, sounding exasperated.

"I'm just curious, is all," Alice bites her lip, keeps the truth deep inside her. '_Because I want to know how you survived, how you get up every day and keep breathing when a part of you is gone.'_

"Yeah, well, curiosity killed the cat, now didn't it?"

There's nothing Alice feels can adequately follow that statement, so she just makes a small noise that sounds something like agreement.

"None of that. Come on," Will says, rising to his feet, his hands doing a quick brushing off of his backside, then his shirt where an errant leaf is sticking to it. "If neither of us is going to sleep then."

Alice watches as Will walks toward her, motions her to move away from the tree she's leaning against. At first, she stays where she is, looking up at him, until he grows impatient and starts muttering under his breath about how _'bloody stubborn'_ she is. Uncertainly, she rises, giving him enough room to sit down and take her place, back against the trunk. Stealing her spot, more like it.

"What are you-"

"Less talking," he tells her, the command lacking any bite to it as he grabs her wrist, rather gently, and guides her until she's sitting between his splayed legs, back to him.

"But what are you doing?"

It's a testament to how much she trusts Will that she hasn't questioned him more than this, that she's actually allowing him to put her in such a vulnerable position. Were he an enemy, he could have killed her already. Only he's not an enemy. He's Will, and Alice thinks she might trust him more than she trusts anyone else. Enough that she's allowing him to begin massaging her shoulders, letting his fingers press down her spine, back up, in a steady, rhythmic motion that initially makes her body tense at how _intimate_ it is but ultimately makes her relax more than she has in a very long time.

It feels safe. Comfortable.

"Someone I once knew would do this for me when I couldn't sleep," Will tells her, his hands pausing for the briefest of moments at the small of her back.

There's a touch of something in his words that lets her know he wouldn't do this for just anyone. He can't see it, and she's not sure she would want him to, but Alice smiles, another real smile. Because for the first time since losing Cyrus, it feels a little bit like being home.


End file.
